News

Vancomyin re-designed with potential to be more potent

The BBC report that scientists in the US have re-designed vancomycin to increase the strength and durability of the drug. It is yet to be tested in animals and people but laboratory tests showed the drug was effective against VRE and didn’t lose potency after 50 rounds of exposure to the bacterium. Original report from Proceedings […]

Bacteria able to shrug off the drug of last resort colistin

The world is on the cusp of a “post-antibiotic era”, scientists have warned after finding bacteria resistant to drugs used when all other treatments have failed. They identified bacteria able to shrug off the drug of last resort – colistin – in patients and livestock in China.

Antibiotic surge revealed by seasonal maps

World Antibiotic Awareness Week

World Antibiotic Awareness Week aims to increase awareness of global antibiotic resistance and to encourage best practices among the general public, health workers and policy makers to avoid the further emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance.

Around 74% of community pharmacists believe their skills in helping to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing are not being used, according to the results of a survey presented ahead of European Antibiotics Awareness Day.

European Antibiotic Awareness Day

​The European Antibiotic Awareness Day is an annual European public health initiative that takes place on 18 November to raise awareness about the threat to public health of antibiotic resistance and the importance of prudent antibiotic use. The latest data confirms that across the European Union the number of patients infected by resistant bacteria is […]

WHO Releases 2015 Global TB Surveillance Report

Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) released its Global Tuberculosis Report 2015. The report finds there were 9.6 million new TB cases in 2014. While this is a slight increase in total new cases, WHO reports that this reflects improved surveillance and reporting methods rather than an actual increase in TB disease globally.

Review on AMR new report: Rapid diagnostics to stop unnecessary use of antibiotics

“In this paper we have set out three policy interventions to support the development of game-changing new rapid diagnostics and their widespread adoption over the next five years. These three interventions do not just consider the needs of the richest health systems, but instead seek to be useful to the largest number of patients, in […]

The next Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on ‘Antimicrobial Stewardship: Managing Antibiotic Resistance’ starts on 28 August 2017. The course is free and lasts 6 weeks with approximately 3 hours of learning/activities per week. To join the August cohort or to register for future dates visit the FutureLearn website.

Launch of ARC – the Antimicrobial Resource Centre

The Antimicrobial Resource Centre (ARC) has been launched by the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. ARC is an intelligent software platform that publishes syndicated content in a range of resource formats for the infection community. Within ARC users will be able to search by topic, keyword, author and resource type (slide-sets, podcasts, peer review papers […]